Anti-money laundering law: A new legal regime to combat financial crime in Malaysia?

Before the enactment of the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001 (AMLATFA), the fight against financial crime can be found in several statutes such as the Penal Code, Anti- Corruption Act 1997 and Companies Act 1965. It is generally accepted that by freezing and forfeiting the proceeds of crime, it would give significant impact on the fight against financial crime. However, under these legislations there were few shortcomings of the procedures on how the proceeds of crime could be seized and forfeited. As such, the enactment of AMLATFA is considered timely to overcome these problems.AMLATFA provides innovative tools for the law enforcement officials to follow the money trail which will eventually lead to those who committed the financial crime. It also provides authorities with more powerful seizure and forfeiture measures.This is seen as a new law enforcement strategy to combat financial crime. It is believed that this approach is more effective than the traditional approach which only punished the individual criminal but failed to diminish the criminal operations.This paper aims to examine how the anti-money laundering law could be utilized to combat financial crime in Malaysia. To achieve this aim, this paper will focus on the provisions relating to measures for freezing, seizure and forfeiture of proceeds of crime under AMLATFA